Labour accused of feeble response to ex-London mayor’s Hitler remarks

File photo: Former London mayor Ken Livingstone leaves after appearing on the LBC radio station in London

Britain’s opposition Labour Party suspended former London Mayor Ken Livingstone for saying Adolf Hitler had supported Zionism, but the party was accused of being too soft on the veteran hard-left politician.

The row over Livingstone comes against a backdrop of criticism within Labour and in the Jewish community, rejected by party leaders, that Labour has had a persistent problem with anti-Semitism under hard-left leader Jeremy Corbyn.

“This was a chance for the Labour Party to show that it would not tolerate wilful and unapologetic baiting of the Jewish community,” Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said in a statement.

“Worryingly, the party has yet again failed to show that is sufficiently serious about tackling the scourge of anti-Semitism.”

Livingstone, who has a history of making provocative remarks, faced a backlash after saying a year ago that Hitler “was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews”.

He was suspended late on Tuesday for two years, a measure that will expire in April 2018 to take into account the period of suspension already served.

Critics, including some within Labour, said Livingstone should have been permanently expelled.

“A new low for my party this evening. Appalling decision. Why is anti-Semitism being treated differently from any other form of racism?” wrote Luciana Berger, a Labour member of parliament who has faced anti-Semitic abuse, on Twitter.

Livingstone was unapologetic, saying he had been speaking the truth when he made his remarks, and likened the disciplinary process against him to “a court in North Korea”.

The row comes at a time when Labour is profoundly divided over the fundamental goals and direction of the party.

Corbyn, a veteran campaigner once on the fringes of the party, unexpectedly became leader in 2015 on a wave of support from young activists.

He retains strong support from grassroots party members, but many Labour lawmakers see Corbyn as a failed leader who has no chance of winning an election.

Corbyn is a long-standing supporter of the cause of Palestinian rights, which opponents say has given cover to a surge of thinly veiled anti-Semitism among some party activists.

An internal party inquiry last year cleared Labour of having a problem with anti-Semitism, but its findings were later thrown into question when its chair, Shami Chakrabarti, was appointed to the House of Lords by Corbyn.

A prominent parliamentary committee said in October Corbyn had not done enough to stamp out anti-Jewish sentiment in his party.

Has there been an investigation into whether or not hitler supported Zionism or is this just being shouted down without proper process? If the answer is yes and the outcome was that Hitler did not support it then Labour should have expelled him. However, if an investogation has been done and it is found that Hitler did support Zionism as unbelievable and reprehensible as that maybe to people then those who have cried antisemitism and racism need to apologise and livingstone be reinstated. The problem is knee jerk reactions. What is needed are facts.

Really?

Hitler did not support Zionism; he hated it. In 1933 he arranged for German Jews to be expelled to the British Mandate in Palestine. He did this so he could ‘rid’ Germany of what he saw as an unclean race of humans, and not because he was a supporter of Zionism.

A hypothetical parallel scenario today would be for a European nation to expel its Muslim citizens to the Middle East and then for someone to claim that they did that because they were Islamophiles. Utter rubbish, obviously.

NuffSaid

Nobody has investigated and provided evidence on both sides. This is what the public needs, not hysteria. Nice analogy but that only applies based on investigation of evidence and conclusion based on the scenarios provided in my previous post. Did Hitler support Zionism or not? That’s the question that nobody seems to answer.

Really?

The relevant facts have been established by historians already, and they are not disputed. Furthermore, the decision to punish Livingstone was taken by a disciplinary panel which one would assume had tried to determine the truth or falsehood of Livingstone’s statements and not just made a decision based on thin air. What is causing the uproar is the laxity of the punishment.

Plasma Dawn

Hitler did not support Zionism because Zionism was the national movement of the Jewish people seeking the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, whereas the Nazi doctrine was that Jews were an inferior and degenerate parasitic race that had to isolated and possibly exterminated, not merely relocated somewhere else where they could live and thrive and have a renewed chance to dominate the world again.

Hitler did, however, have an agreement with the Zionist German Jews that was signed in August, 1933, and which enabled the emigration of some 60,000 German Jews to Palestine between 1933 and 1939 (in order to make Germany Judenfrei, i.e. free of Jews, for the time being).

Really?

Absolutely disgusting to watch the fringe left and its antisemitism take center stage once again in such a respected party as UK Labour. Corbyn and his ilk are dragging the party into murky depths.

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